Change Hostname of Linux box

If you want to change the hostname of your Linux box after installation, its really easy to do so.

Step 1: Edit file /etc/sysconfig/network (i.e: vi/etc/sysconfig/network)

Step 2: Add or change HOSTNAME=your-desired-name-here

Step 3: Save your change (i.e: type :wq in vi)

Step 4: Restart the network daemon. (i.e: service xinetd restart). You can alternatively just type reboot on the command line to restart your box.

Maybe there is a different way to do this also, but this is fairly quick and easy!

Flat tires = No fun

Whoever thought of designing a car ('99 Ford Fiesta) so that instead of traditionally holding the spare tire in the boot under the mat, and decided it would be a good idea to instead, have the tire held underneath the car so you would have to open a big fuck off bolt with no space whatsoever, should be shot.

While driving down to Shannon town center on my lunch break my back right tire became as flat as a pancake. Tremendous. Trying to pull in, in a packed car park so you have enough room to change the tire, whilst at the same time, not looking like a complete idiot driving on a flat tire, is a fine balancing act.

Its a bit ironic that on Monday I had gotten a new jack and was talking about swapping the tires around on my car so I could know how to do it when the time comes, and its even more ironic that I was looking at buying a new car last night! Changing the tire is easy. Whats difficult is unscrewing the bolt in the boot with no room when its freezing cold and your hands are numb and then pulling out the tire (which is covered in muck and filth) because its UNDER THE CAR. Design, unreal.

Call of Duty 5: World At War Beta Review

After finally getting my hands on a beta key for the Call of Duty 5 multiplayer beta from some generous guy at ExiledGamers, I think the beta is pretty decent.

As you may know already, it is being developed by TreyArch, the same developers of Call of Duty 3, as the developers have realised that 1 year is not enough time to create a decent game and its an infinitely better idea to have a two year development cycle, even if it means consecutive games will be produced by different developers. I know a lot of people have been against COD5:WaW from the start as they dislike TreyArch, but wasn't it not long ago that EA churned out a rubbish Fifa every year, and now look at what they had to offer this year: a top quality football game. This is further testament to the fact that people who judge a title or have preconcieved opinions about a game should not be listened to.

COD5 keeps the same multiplayer format as COD4 which includes levelling up, unlocking different weapons and perks from levelling up, and completing various challenges. It was one of the most entertaining and durable multiplayer experience from any game to date, so immediately Call of Duty 5 is on the right track.

There are 3 maps on the beta. There is one "Roundhouse", which is very entertaining and includes the ability to use tanks. It is set in the ruins of what looks to be an old railroad station. Makin is a very dark setting on a beach, where you can go across walkways to various huts or underneath them. It seems to be to be a snipers heavan which I'm not terribly fond of. The last one, Castle, is set of a large slope around the remains of a Japanese castle. Like RoundHouse, this map is a very, very good.

Lookswise, the game is very similar to COD3, which isn't terribly surprising. Going back to world war 2 may not have been a great idea, but there are still a huge variety of guns, something to suit everyone, there are new perks also. A 3 kill streak will allow you to see your enemies on the radar, a 5 kill streak will let you call in yoru artilary (same as an airstrike in COD4), and 7 kills in a row will allow you to call in dogs (instead of a helicopter in COD4). The dogs don't look very visually appealling but hopefully this will be fixed for the final game.

I've seen a couple of glitches too, such as somebody lying flat on a hill, but being able to see and shoot right through it.

All in all it looks to be shaping up as a good game. Now if only we could get rid of those annoying Americans which all they seem to do is whine about people using juggernaut (extra health perk). If its in the game, its ok to use it. Just because I'm smart enough to use it, and you're not, you shuoldn't be moaning. Thats an indictment on your intelligence.

I still haven't recieved my beta key from callofduty.com, but if I do, I will post it up here.

American presidential election overview

So...the American presidential race in a nutshell, Obama/Biden vs McCain/Palin. To be honest, I have no idea why this is even as close as it is.

McCain made an absolutely horrible choice of running mate. Sarah Palin has since been caught out multiple times. Firstly, she tried to regurgitate a Ronald Regan speech about the American troops being "on a mission from God", and then when quizzed on this, tries to backtrack horribly and ends up contradicting herself.

Then in the vice presidential debate, her winking and constant attempts to avoid the questions she was asked, along with her sickening fake smile, cheesey lines, should easily have turned voters against her.

If that wasn't the final nail in the coffin, then surely her being found guilty of using her position as Govenor of Alaska for her own personal benefit in a family feud, is.

I don't see how any intelligent American could honestly vote for her. McCain talks a lot about his judgement, but his judgement is more than questionable after picking Palin as a running mate. Not only that, but also his constant contradictory answers on numerous questions, surely should give the American people a hint that he is not the right man for the job.

Obama missed the chance of a knockout blow at the second presidential debate in my opinion. When McCain refered to Obama as "that one", it was incredibly disrepectful and showed a huge amount of distain for Obama. And McCain wonders why people are shouting "kill him" in reference to Obama at his rallies. Well, it tends to happen when you show your opponent no respect. I think if Obama had interrupted him after he said "that one" and replied with something like "Please Senator McCain, show me the same respect I show you", it would have been a huge blow, but Obama may have been a victim of his own self-restraint.

Another McCain own goal, happened when a woman at his rally said, "I can't trust that Obama, he's... he's an....an ARAB" and McCain replied with "No Ma'am, he is a good family man....", whats the implication here? Arabs can't be good family men. Another political own goal.

Part of me wants McCain to be elected because of the comedy factor, but anybody with any shred of intelligence and an unbiased opinion towards either party, should clearly see Obama is by far the best man for the job.

Pro Evolution 2009 to ship with outdated squads

Konami have announced that the squads that appear on the Pro Evolution 2009 demo will not be updated when the game ships on October 17th. This is disappointing for a number of reasons. Not only will online play feel dated before you ever play a game, but it is made all the worse due to the fact that EA updated all squads (including lower league squads) of all leagues available on FIFA'09.

However, Konami are unable, or indeed unwilling to update the squads of just the very, very small selection of leagues they provide. This could very well be the final nail in the Pro Evo coffin after last years poor showing. Nevertheless, the have decided to release the following statement which makes matters even worse

"It has come to the attention of Konami that the fans of PES are passionate enough about the PES series to require console updates on the latest features, details and improvements of PES 2008. Because of this, Konami are due to release PES 2009 downloadable content that will be available in February 2009 that will enhance Konami's potential. Any downloadable content will be chargeable on all formats"

Right, so that basically means, "If you want updated squads, not only will you have to wait 4 and a half months, but you will also have to pay for it too"

Thanks, but no thanks. What an absolute joke. First Konami football game I won't be buying since ISS.

Update: All may not be yet lost. Konami have announced a "November update" which will add more licensed teams (Atletico Madrid being one of them), so presumably, this will update squads and put Berbatov with United, Robinho with City, etc. It also seems that Konami have backtracked on their decision to charge people for updates aswell. What difference a week makes.

Linux/Unix Quick Commands Quick Reference Cheat Sheet

Some vital commands (and some explanations) to help navigate (or bluff!) your way through Linux/Unix. Anything between the square brackets you will need to fill in to the command as appropriate.

Kernel Modules:
Insert a kernel module: insmod [path to kernel object]
Remove a kernel module: rmmod [path to kernel object]

Shutting down / Rebooting:
Shutdown system with no reboot: Shutdown -h now
Shutdown system with reboot: Shutdown -r now
Reboot system: reboot

Network:
Connect remotely to machine: ssh [ip address or machine name]
Connect remotely as machine as a different user (i.e: root): ssh root@[ip address or machine name]
Manual pages for a topic: man [topic]
View I.P address: ifconfig
Restart network on machine: service network restart

Administrative:
Update Linux filesystem (useful after install): Updatedb
Add user account: adduser [the desired username]
Give user account a password: passwd [username you wish to add password for]
Log in a superuser (i.e: root): su
Execute current command as root: sudo [command as normal]

General:
Close mode/connection of current terminal: exit
Mount/Unmount device graphically: usermount
View current processes (selective): ps
View full list of processes: top
Kill process: Kill [process id]
Get listings on a topic: apropos [topic]
Install a program (Look at the README first)but, generally: make or make install
Extract a .tar or .tar.gz: tar -zxvf [path to tar.gz archive]
Install rpm: rpm -ihv [path to rpm]
Compile a C/C++ program: g++ [path to a .c file]
Redirection: ./program > programoutput.txt (run the application called program and redirect the output to the programoutput.txt file instead of displaying it on the terminal)
Get absolute path to program using an alias: which [program name]

Files/Directories:
. (dot) means the current directory (./a.out means execute the program a.out in the current directory)
../ means back one directory (../../ means back two directories, etc etc)

Change Directory: cd [path to directory]
Go back one directory: cd ..
List contents of directory: ls
List contents of directory including all files: ls -a
Copy a file: cp [path to file you want copied] [path to directory you want file copied to
Move/Rename a file: mv [path to file you want moved/renamed] [path to directory you want the file moved/renamed to]
Remove file: rm [path to file]
Remove file and stop asking me questions: rm -f [path to file]
Remove directory: rm -r [path to directory]
Remove directory and stop asking me questions: rm -rf [path to directory]
View file on terminal: cat [path to file]
View and file and show me any updates in real time: tail -F [path to file] (eg: tail -F /var/log/messages to view the kernel log in real time)
Search directory for filename: find [path to directory] -name [filename]
Search directory for file containing specific text: find [directory] -name "[containing text]"
Change permissions on file or directory: chmod 7 7 7 (gives all permissions to all users)

File permissions confused the hell out of me at first, when I looked at "drwxr-xr-x" as the permissions, I haven't a clue what was going on. It breaks down as follows: d stands for directory. If its not a directory (its a file!), it will appear as -. The other 9 are dividied into 3 groups of three, Owner, Group, Others. In the case above the Owner has rwx, read, write, execute. Group has r-x, read and execute, and Others have r-x, also read and execute.

Bash:
Start bash: bash (complex!)
Run a script within bash: source [path to script]

FIFA'09 Review

So after having a couple of days to digest FIFA'09, I think that the 8 out of 10 it recieved on Eurogamer is very harsh. Last year's offering also recieved 8 out of 10 and to say there has not been enough improvement to warrant at least a 9 out of 10 score is crazy.

Firstly, the gameplay is significantly improved on what was already a very solid base that was delivered last year. The gameplay is slightly faster so build up is the perfect pace to reflect real life, you can attack as quickly or as slowly as you would like using the vast amount of sliders for customising tactics. The small things are also a significant step forward, from the A.I making intelligent off the ball runs and pointing where they want the ball so you can deliver a killer through ball (through balls are much, much more effective than before), to the fact that players will actually leap off the ground in a number of increidbly realistic, new animations for heading the ball. Players will actually try to climb, jostle and land awkwardly.

The tackling has been reworked also. It feel's a lot more like tackling in UEFA 2008 in wet conditions, where the players will slide for long and take longer to get up. The physical part of the game is also more realistic, Ronaldo is likely to fall to the ground when jostled, Nemanja Vidic is likely to push a smal forward like Sergio Aguero off the ball pretty quickly, but expect him to be left for dead in a straight face against Aguero. All in all, very realistic!!

Shooting is very similar to last year's version which in my opinion, was absolutely perfect. It is significantly difficult to score a 35 yard thunderbolt, but it can be done with some skill (or luck!). The tricks don't really seem to be very effective, especially against the CPU, but the rainbow flick can work a treat if you can perfect it.

The achievements list seems very easy for the most part, although the sheer volume of them makes it a challenge to complete all of them. Mostly they are worth 5 or 10G, which is fair given their difficult.

One the coolest things I've ever seen in any game happened last night while playing on XBOX Live, a few weeks ago, Guille Franco of Villarreal hit the post against Man Utd with a back heel flick from a low cross with his trailing leg which is incredibly difficult but, my low cross from Ronaldo brought the virtual Berbatov to do the exact same thing.

The only negatives are that the UEFA Cup holders, Zenit St. Petersberg aren't in the game which is a bit of a disappointment as if there were included they should be a four to four and a half star team. Apart from that, I don't like how the unranked quick match is buried so deep in the menu structure, while ranked quick match is at the very top. I generally like to have one unranked game after turning on so I get into the swing of things and don't get my ass handed to me.

Another minor annoyance is the attacking/defending pattern online, I always seem to be controlling the game, pushing forward leaving absolutely massive gaps at the back making it much easier for you're opponent to build attacks. Thankfully I've perfected my tactics (well, still needs a little tweaking) so I'm hard to break down but still get to push on quite a bit!

Overall though, this game is class, I'd easily give it (at the very least and being stingy), 9/10. The bar for Pro Evo (October 17th) has been raised!!

Pro Evolution 2009 Demo Review

After waiting for the 1.18GB demo to download from Xbox Live, my first thought was: "this isn't very good!". This is yet more proof that you should never jump to conclusions. After getting used to the strange first touch that players seem to take, Pro Evo 2009 is much, much better than last years version. It's still not incredible by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, after you play 4 or 5 games, and get back into it, it feels more like Pro Evo. The more you play it, the more you'll like it, don't give up after 1 game. After having less than convincing first thoughts, two hours later I'm still playing the demo....

They have gone back to basic's a little and the game is much more about thinking and finding a way through, like it used to be in the old days. It's difficult to outrun any one when you have the ball (even with Cristiano Ronaldo), so you've to really work for an opening....just like how it used to be..

The replays aren't as disgracefully slow from a framerate point of view as they were in 2008, but then again, they would still be categorised as slow. After a match (...after EVERY match..), you are forced to watch a ridiculously long video which demo's the "Become A Legend" mode, but this is okay the first time, because the mode does look absolutely unreal. It seems much better than FIFA's "Be A Pro" and that was pretty damn good!

The squad's seem to be out of date (Silvestre, Simpson, Saha, Dong, Campbell are all still at United), but one can only assume that they will have all the transfers up to the end of the transfer window in the final version (now confirmed here, there will be no squad update). I mean, it's not a big job to do it yourself, but it's incredibly annoying when it comes to online play where you are forced to use the default squads. Konami have also promised that there will be no lag online (well, at least not due to the actual game itself), which was an absolute shambles last year. I lived online with PES6, but I've played about 5 games online (if even!) on PES2008.

One major, major problem is the ease at which you can get sent off. First game i played, I got sent off for an innocent challenge, I go down the other end of the pitch, and Puyol gets himself sent off for nothing. Then next game, playing against Madrid, they have two players sent off, Marcelo, the left back for a nothing tackle wide on the right. Crazy. I then have a man sent off for a foul on the end of the box. 3 red cards for 3 slide tackles. Does Konami not see a problem with this?!

How does it compare to the FIFA 09 demo? Well they are pretty much like chalk and cheese. They are completely different games. Comparing them is pretty much pointless. There are NO comparisons, gameplay is different, sound is different, first touch is different, graphics are different. If you're a real football fan, then you should probably get both. If you're a hardcore or a reasonably loyal PES lover, then Pro Evo is obviously for you (It amazes me that no matter how bad PES2008 was, they will still maintain it was great and "much" better than FIFA'08), otherwise FIFA 09 is your game.

Release Dates:
FIFA 09: 03 October 2008 (EU)
Pro Evolution: 17 October 2008 (EU)

Removing the windows return carriage

If you have ever edited a piece of code on Windows (i.e: with Notepad or Wordpad), and then looked at it on Linux or FreeBSD, depending on your VI settings, chances are you will see the Windows return carriage (represented as "^M") after each and every line. This not only makes a mess of the file, but it can be tedious to clean line by line, especially if your dealing with a large chunk of code! Thankfully, the following line will remove the ^M Windows return carriage, removing whats in the quotes with your own file name(s):

tr -d '\r' < "myfile.c"> "mycleanfile.c"

This saves a lot of hassle, especially if you've edited a lot of files and haven't realised you've introduced ^M's every where. Although you could just use eclipse or Notepad++ which avoids the problem altogether on Windows!

Pro Evolution 2009 Demo out Thursday

It's been leaked that apparently the Pro Evolution 2009 demo is due to be released on Thursday, with 4 playable club teams (Manchester United, Liverpool, Real Madrid & Barcelona). The playable teams aren't confirmed yet though. I guess we will just have to wait until Thursday to find out. Seeing as Konami have gained the license for United and Liverpool, it immediately appeals to a lot more people, as they are two of the most supported clubs in the world.

It's a pity that they lost the license for La Liga, but at least they have Real, Barca, Deportivo, Espanyol and Mallorca. I can't wait to play the demo as it should be a massive improvement on last year's effort. I've been a fan of Konami's efforts since the days of ISS on the playstation one, but FIFA '08 was the first time that as regards gameplay, EA was the victor over Konami. In Pro Evo 2008, the gameplay was too fast, all the players ran with a form of strange limp, and the online gameplay was broken due to lag, which was no fault of Xbox Live users connections.